You can support cancer research in more ways than writing a check. Financial donations matter enormously, but so does volunteering your time, raising your voice with lawmakers, participating in clinical trials, and even donating biological samples. The National Cancer Institute receives about $7.35 billion in federal funding annually, yet private contributions and individual action fill critical gaps, especially for underfunded and rare cancers.
Donate Strategically
The most direct way to fund cancer research is a financial gift to a reputable organization. But how you give can be just as important as how much. Monthly recurring donations provide labs with predictable funding they can plan around, which is especially valuable for long-term studies that take years to produce results. One-time gifts spike during awareness months and year-end campaigns, but steady monthly contributions keep research moving between those surges.
Beyond standard donations, there are several less obvious options worth considering:
- Memorial and honor gifts: Many organizations let you create a dedicated page for a loved one, where friends and family can contribute in their memory.
- Planned giving: You can include a cancer research organization in your will or estate plan, ensuring a lasting impact after your lifetime.
- IRA charitable rollovers: If you’re 70½ or older, you can direct funds from your IRA to a qualified charity, which may reduce your taxable income.
- Donor-advised funds: These accounts let you make a tax-deductible contribution now and distribute grants to cancer organizations over time.
- Gifts of stock or vehicles: Donating appreciated securities or a vehicle can provide tax benefits while funding research.
Double Your Gift Through Your Employer
Many companies set aside philanthropic dollars and match their employees’ charitable contributions. The process is simple: you request a matching gift form from your human resources department, send it along with your donation, and the charity and your employer handle the rest. Some companies match dollar for dollar, others at different ratios, but regardless of the percentage, these programs effectively multiply your impact at no extra cost to you. Matching programs often extend to retirees, spouses, and board members as well, so it’s worth checking even if you’re not currently employed at the company.
Workplace giving campaigns also offer easy entry points. The Combined Federal Campaign covers government employees, and many companies participate in United Way payroll deduction programs that include cancer research nonprofits.
Vet the Organization Before You Give
Not every cancer charity spends donations the same way. CharityWatch considers a charity “highly efficient” when at least 75% of its spending goes directly to programs rather than administration and fundraising. The Charities Review Council sets its floor at 65% for program spending, with no more than 35% going to overhead. These are useful benchmarks when comparing organizations.
The Cancer Research Institute, for example, holds a top “A” rating from CharityWatch, with 86% of its budget directed to programs and a cost of just $12 to raise every $100. Before donating, check an organization’s rating on CharityWatch or Charity Navigator. Look at the program percentage, the cost to raise $100, and whether the charity meets governance and transparency benchmarks. A few minutes of research ensures your money reaches a lab bench instead of a marketing budget.
Fundraise in Your Community
Peer-to-peer fundraising lets you rally your network around cancer research without needing deep pockets yourself. The concept is straightforward: you set up a personal fundraising page through an organization like St. Jude or the American Cancer Society, then share it with friends, family, and social media followers. One Tennessee teenager raised $100,000 for St. Jude through this approach and went on to build a community portal for doing good.
If you want to organize something more hands-on, proven formats include 5K runs, golf tournaments, trivia nights, event galas, car washes, scavenger hunts, and virtual challenges. Social media challenges can be surprisingly effective when they tap into a specific skill or hook. One St. Jude supporter turned her talent for juggling a soccer ball into a viral fundraiser. The key is picking something you’re genuinely enthusiastic about, because that energy translates into participation and donations.
Push for Research Funding Through Advocacy
Federal funding decisions shape which cancers get studied and how quickly new treatments reach patients. Contacting your congressional representatives to support increased funding for the National Cancer Institute is one of the most impactful things you can do that costs nothing. The Cancer Moonshot initiative alone channeled $1.8 billion into cancer research over seven years through the 21st Century Cures Act, and that funding existed because advocates pushed for it.
If you want to go further, organizations like Friends of Cancer Research offer free, self-paced advocacy training courses. More than 1,000 advocates have completed these programs, which teach you how drug development and regulatory processes work so you can communicate effectively with researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and regulators. The training is available at ProgressforPatients.org and is designed for people with no scientific background.
Participate in a Clinical Trial
Clinical trials are the only way new cancer treatments move from the lab to the clinic, and they depend entirely on volunteers. These trials evaluate whether new drugs, therapies, or interventions are safe, effective, and worth pursuing on a larger scale. Without enough participants, promising treatments stall for years or never reach the patients who need them.
Your participation does more than test a single drug. Patient-reported data from trials feeds into registries that inform how future studies are designed, how treatments are monitored long-term, and which research questions get prioritized next. This is especially critical for rare cancers, where small patient populations make it difficult to run traditional large-scale trials. For rare and ultra-rare diseases, every participant helps illuminate conditions that might otherwise remain poorly understood for decades.
If you’re interested, the NCI maintains a searchable database of open trials at cancer.gov. Your oncologist can also help identify trials relevant to your diagnosis and stage.
Donate Tissue or Blood Samples
Biobanks, collections of donated tissue, blood, and other biological samples, are essential infrastructure for cancer research. Scientists use these specimens to study how cancers develop, identify new drug targets, and test therapies before they ever reach a clinical trial. If you’re scheduled for a biopsy, surgery, or blood draw, your care team may ask whether you’d be willing to donate a sample for research.
Donating is entirely voluntary and has no impact on your surgical procedure or medical care. Federal guidelines prioritize protecting your privacy and personal medical information. You’ll go through a consent process that explains exactly what will happen with your sample, and you can decline at any point. For patients who want their diagnosis to contribute to something beyond their own treatment, biospecimen donation is a quiet but powerful form of support.
Focus on Underfunded Cancers
Research funding is not distributed equally across cancer types. Rare cancers face a compounding set of challenges: late or incorrect diagnoses, a shortage of clinical expertise, limited research interest from pharmaceutical companies, and the logistical difficulty of running clinical trials with small patient populations. International cooperation, which could help by pooling patients across borders, faces its own regulatory and financial obstacles.
Organizations like the International Rare Cancers Initiative work to launch clinical trials specifically for rare tumors, but they need visibility and funding. If you’re choosing where to direct your donations or fundraising efforts, seeking out nonprofits focused on less common cancers can fill gaps that federal funding and major charities don’t fully cover. Targeted therapies are increasingly promising for rare cancers, but only if the research pipeline gets enough support to move them forward.